Wow, life brings us to strange places, places we would never have expected to be.  Some are good and some… not so much.  We have a beautiful eight year old daughter and if you would have asked me 8 years ago if I would ever consider homeschooling the answer would have been a resounding NO!  Be careful, because those things you say no to could end up being maybes, then they might just turn into a great big old yes.   And that yes just might come to you louder than the before-mentioned NO.

I have often been asked why we chose to homeschool.  And if I am not asked why when they find out I get this sideways look as if I am one of the strangest creatures on earth.  What is going through their head???  Do they think I am crazy for homeschooling or are they fascinated and just too afraid to ask?  I will never know and just smile and move on.

Well, some things did happen to urge me and my husband to consider homeschooling.  First, it was incredibly painful for me to leave my daughter all day long at school with someone else.  I love my daughter, surely I was meant to have more time with her!  Right???  I remember crying daily after I dropped her off wondering if I would be able to handle her being gone every single day.  It took years to get pregnant, and I felt as if I was already being forced to give her to someone else.  It was painful, as most parents, I love my daughter deeply.

She loved school to begin with and had no problems for the first couple of months.  Then it started, she went through a lot of teasing for being small, which is of course something you can help your child work through even though it is painful to see their tears.  Then came the bullying.  Two boys got physically abusive with her.  One was a minor situation that was handled and taken care of immediately never to happen again.  But the other boy caused much more trouble than the first one.  He was choking her on a regular basis and ended up picking her up throwing her down on the ground on her head which resulted in a neck injury.

Now through all this we were “working” with the school to get the situation resolved and were assured more than once that it was being handled.  The boy was being watched and wasn’t going to be allowed anywhere near her without supervision.  But clearly that was not happening.  By the third semester when I would pick my daughter up from school she would get migraines and as we would drive home she would scream, cry and hold her head because it would hurt so much.  The joy of going to school and learning was gone.  She didn’t love learning anymore, or being at school.  My baby was miserable all day, everyday… except on the weekends when she would let her guard down and feel free.

And before you ask, yes we did take her to the doctor and his diagnosis was stress related migraines.  Remove the stress, they will leave.  How do you remove a stress when you are not there to make sure it doesn’t happen?  It was all I could do to take her to school and drop her off and often I sat in the parking lot waiting and praying for her until the day was over.  Many prayers went to heaven over this situation!

Like many other parents though, I felt I had no other choice.  Children HAVE to go to school.  It is the law.  Many tears flowed.  And that is when my search began … what was I going to do to protect my child and get her to love learning again?  What was I allowed to do???  Check back tomorrow to see more of our journey!

What was your journey to homeschooling?  How did you come to the decision to take your child’s education and happiness into your own hands?